Full Title: John Kelly, Trump’s Homeland Security pick, gave a remarkable speech 4 days after his son died serving in Afghanistan On Veterans Day in 2010, inside an unremarkable hotel ballroom in St. Louis, Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, delivered what the Washington Post described as “a passionate and at times angry speech about the military’s sacrifices and its troops’ growing sense of isolation from society.” That he was able to speak at all was remarkable. Four days earlier, Kelly’s 29-year-old son, Marine 1st Lt. Robert Michael Kelly, stepped on a land mine while leading a patrol in southern Afghanistan....

Fifteen years, half a trillion dollars and 150,000 lives since going to war, the United States is trying to extricate itself from Afghanistan. Afghans are being left to fight their own fight. A surging Taliban insurgency, meanwhile, is flush with a new inflow of money. With their nation’s future at stake, Afghan leaders have renewed a plea to one power that may hold the key to whether their country can cling to democracy or succumbs to the Taliban. But that power is not the United States. It is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is critical because of its unique position in...

Many hotspots and geopolitical adversaries are constantly in the news and likely at the forefront of the foreign policy issues President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is focused on. Yet the issue that is most likely to be the first real foreign policy crisis of the Trump administration is the one that received no discussion at all during the presidential debates – Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan? The longest war in U.S. history? Where the United States, its allies in NATO, and several partner nations still have in excess of 13,000 troops on the ground? Where the United States last year spent approximately...

THE HEART OF TERRORISM Pakistan named and shamed. Will it reform? At the Heart of Asia (HoA) summit which concluded on Sunday in Amritsar, Pakistan was well and truly cornered for promoting terrorism. Its isolation can be understood from the fact that for the first time, a HoA declaration named the Pakistan-based terror outfits, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, as forces that are working to destabilise the region. This is a severe indictment of Pakistan, since not only do the two organisations operate from Pakistani soil but they also get overt and covert support from the establishment, especially from the Army there....

<p>In the aftermath of the Raymond Davis and bin Laden affairs, General James Mattis was key in maintaining ties with top Pakistani military leadership.</p>
<p>New Delhi: The next US secretary of defence was the Obama administration's main man to keep a line open and bring ties with the top Pakistani military leadership back on an even keel in the dark days following the arrest of a CIA contractor and the killing of Osama bin Laden.</p>

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the former prisoner of war who’s accused of endangering comrades by walking off his post in Afghanistan, is asking President Barack Obama to pardon him before leaving office. White House and Justice Department officials on Saturday said Bergdahl had submitted copies of the clemency request seeking leniency. If granted by Obama, it would allow Bergdahl to avert a court-martial trial scheduled for April where he faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, the latter of which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. …

Beijing - Religious extremism has begun to spread to inland China from its western Xinjiang region, long considered by the government to be at the forefront of its efforts to battle Islamist separatists, the country's top religious affairs official said. China says it faces a serious threat from Islamist militants in Xinjiang, which borders central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and is home to the largely Muslim Uighur minority group. Hundreds have died there in recent years in violence that Beijing blames on religious extremists, and the government has put in place tight controls on religion in the name of combating...

Obama is big on making up his own laws and rules. He rules by executive order and he's gotten into the truly illegal habit of unilaterally signing treaties with foreign governments. This is a very basic problem. And in the context of his deal to take in Muslim migrants rejected by Australia, he is being warned once again that his actions are grossly illegal and unconstitutional. ... We’re not even being told the total numbers who will shortly be making their way to our shores, but the Journal notes that two of the camps located on Naru and Manus Islands...

You would be hard-pressed to find an American who does more for the troops than actor Gary Sinise, the tireless advocate who, through the Gary Sinise Foundation, spends much of his time looking out for their interests. Sinise spent his Thanksgiving at Kandahar Air Force Base in Afghanistan, serving Thanksgiving dinner to U.S. forces. …you know, something presidents used to do in America, as one social media user noted. Not that President Barack Obama can be faulted, he had his plate full this week handing out Medal of Freedom awards to top-tier celebrity supporters like Ellen DeGeneres, Robert De Niro,...

The underground church movement in Iran is growing despite the regime's crackdown on Christians. Hundreds are being baptized in large ceremonies and people are praising Jesus for saving them from despair and suicide, according to Christian ministries working in the region. Elam Ministries reported earlier this week that more than 200 Iranians and Afghans were baptized in a large service just outside the Islamic Republic of Iran, with eight different Persian-speaking churches attending. The group said that 20 years ago, estimates put the number of believers in Iran at only 2,000–5,000 people, but new statistics are saying there could be...

HARMANLI, Bulgaria Bulgaria will move migrants who clashed with police at a refugee camp to closed camps and hopes to start extraditing some of them to their native Afghanistan next month, Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said on Friday. More than 400 asylum seekers, angered at being confined at the camp in the southern town of Harmanli near the border with Turkey over a health scare, were arrested after clashes with riot police late on Thursday. The police used water cannon and rubber bullets to quell the riot, in which the interior ministry said 24 officers were hurt. On Friday morning...

Gold Star family booed on flight as they headed to meet their soldier’s remains Staff Sgt. John W. Perry, 30, of Stockton, Calif., died Nov. 12 of injuries sustained from an apparent suicide bomber in Bagram, Afghanistan. Department of Defense Nicholas Filipas The Record (Stockton, Calif.) The father of a soldier who was killed last weekend in Afghanistan was disappointed and hurt after airline passengers booed him and his family as they flew to meet his son’s remains. Stewart Perry, an ex-Marine who lives in Stockton, said the ordeal left him feeling disrespected. “It was really disgusting on the passengers’...

A U.S. government agency loaned $85 million to a developer to construct a hotel (shown) and an apartment complex in Afghanistan, and today it has little to show for its investment except “abandoned empty shells,” according to Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko. In a November 14 letter to Elizabeth Littlefield, president and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Sopko said his investigation “indicates troubling management practices and lax oversight by OPIC,” which took the word of the developer that the projects were proceeding as planned rather than visit the sites regularly to monitor progress....

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has suggested the US may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan. An investigation would expose US forces to ICC scrutiny for the first time. Delivering her annual report to members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Monday, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she would decide “imminently” whether to ask judges for permission to launch a full-blown investigation as to whether US military forces and CIA operatives may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan through the “cruel or violent” interrogation of detainees. Bensouda said the Taliban, Afghan government forces and US...

A US official tells ABC News at least 11 have been wounded, by likely a vehicle-borne improved explosive device. An Afghan official tells ABC News that US forces have cordoned off the air base, located in northeastern Afghanistan, about an hour north of Kabul.

A powerful Taliban truck bomb struck the German consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif late on Thursday, killing at least two people and wounding more than 100 others, officials said. “The suicide attacker rammed his explosives-laden car into the wall of the German consulate in the city,” said local police chief Sayed Kamal Sadat. The Taliban called it a “revenge attack” for a US airstrike in the volatile province of Kunduz earlier this month that left up to 32 civilians dead. …

The State Department this week deemed two more of former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s emails to contain classified information, releasing redacted versions Friday, just days before Election Day. The messages appear to contain U.S. government policy memos toward Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates, preparing Mrs. Clinton for phone calls with leaders of those two nations. Information gleaned from foreign governments, as well as U.S. information about other governments, is supposed to be considered classified from the start. In these instances, like nearly every other of the more than 2,500 messages now deemed classified, there were no markings at the time...

Forty-four Afghan troops visiting the United States for military training have gone missing in less than two years, presumably in an effort to live and work illegally in America, Pentagon officials said. Although the number of disappearances is relatively small — some 2,200 Afghan troops have received military training in the United States since 2007 — the incidents raise questions about security and screening procedures for the programs. They are also potentially embarrassing for US President Barack Obama’s administration, which has spent billions of dollars training Afghan troops as Washington seeks to extricate itself from the costly, 15-year-old war. The...

The Discovery Channel has produced a program called “Taking Fire” and is the product of placing helmet cameras on several soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, stationed in Afghanistan’s Korangal Valley. The action takes place in 2010, during Obama’s surge. It was a typical Obama disaster where he pulled out the troops too soon to have any effect. I do not know if the troops were placed in the position they were because of Obama’s Rules of Engagement or due to some of the worst military planning that I have ever seen. The platoon is stationed on the valley floor...

OTTAWA — A longtime refugee advocate says stories such as that of Liberal MP Maryam Monsef are not uncommon as families fleeing war and violence reconstruct their past in a new land. Monsef, widely touted as Canada's first Afghan-born cabinet minister, caused a stir in the capital Thursday when she issued a statement saying she only recently learned from her mother that she was in fact born in Iran. The 31-year-old minister of democratic institutions says she and her two sisters never held Iranian citizenship and were always considered Afghan citizens, but she was not born in Herat, Afghanistan, "as...

George Soros to invest $500 million in help for refugees http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/20/george-soros-to-invest-500-million-in-help-for-refugees-through-his-open-society-foundations.html George Soros to invest $500 million in help for refugees Nyshka Chandran | @nyshkac 9 Hours Ago CNBC.com Soros invests $500m for refugees Billionaire investor George Soros pledged on Tuesday to invest up to $500 million in programs and companies benefiting migrants and refugees fleeing life-threatening situations. Announced against the backdrop of an ongoing United Nations (U.N.) summit in New York, Soros explained that he wished to harness the power of the private sector for public good. "We will invest in startups, established companies, social impact initiatives, and businesses...

Investigations have revealed that Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, the Afghan-born naturalised United States citizen since 2011 and New York and New Jersey bombings suspect, had married a Pakistani woman and had made at least three months-long trips to both Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2014. His Pakistani-origin wife left the US just days before the attacks and authorities are now working with Pakistani and United Arab Emirates officials to get access to her, media reports said on Tuesday. US authorities are working with his wife's home country of Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates in order to question the woman about what...

Speaking after multiple bombs either exploded or were found in the New York and New Jersey area, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says authorities are seeking Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28. Both the FBI and NYPD want to question Rahami about Saturday night's explosion on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. Rahami "should be considered armed and dangerous," according to the FBI. "The important thing is to get this individual quickly and to continue to be strong and vigilant," de Blasio said via Twitter. He urged anyone with knowledge about the case to call 1-800-577-TIPS. Saturday night's blast wounded 29...

Eight years ago, President Obama pledged to wind down the war in Iraq and redouble efforts to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. “As president, I will make the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be,” he said during a campaign speech. “This is a war that we have to win.” Lasting peace, Mr. Obama said, would depend on not only defeating the Taliban but helping “Afghans grow their economy from the bottom up.” He added, “We cannot lose Afghanistan to a future of narco-terrorism.” Now, at the twilight of his presidency, these goals...

VIDEO: Discovery Shares First Look at 5-Part War Documentary TAKING FIRE September 13,2016 by BWW News Desk Discovery's five-part war documentary series TAKING FIRE premieres September 13th at 10/9c. Check out a first look below! TAKING FIRE is a five-part series bringing viewers into the hearts and minds of American soldiers, a captivating experience like nothing ever seen on film. The series is the story of a band of brothers deployed to defend one of the United States' farthest flung outposts at the gateway to one of the deadliest places on earth: the mouth of the Taliban-held Korengal Valley in...

A Muslim woman in Afghanistan, alongside her son-in-law and daughter-in-law, beheaded her own daughter. As we read in one Afghan report: ď„Ť The girl named Raihana, from Sheikh Almand village of Ghor province, married a young man last year and moved to Jowand district of Badghis province. Abdul Hai Khatibi, the spokesman for the governor of Ghor said that the girl was killed by her brother-in-law, with help from her mother and sister in-law. Her body had been transferred to the government hospital of Ghor province.He added that security and local officials of Badghis province have been notified to find...

Once again U.S. special operations forces attempted to rescue two American University professors kidnapped in Kabul last month. The Mission was unsuccessful because the White House withheld its approval despite Intelligence reports pinpointing the location at which the hostages were being held. The Two professors – one American, the other Australian were kidnapped during the Taliban attack on the American University. Disguised as police, the attackers killed twelve people and likely kidnaped the educators for ransom. After the release of Bergdahl and the ransom payment to Iran, the Taliban or the Haqqani network seized on the opportunity to grab a...

There are now 361 children under the age of 14 living in Germany, interior ministry figures show. Most of these children are from countries in the Middle East and eastern Europe. The influx of refugees in 2015 has led to an increase in the number of child marriages, according to the figures. The data collected up to the date of July 31st 2016 shows that 1,475 minors were registered in the government migration office as married, Der Westen (WAZ) reports. […] The largest number of married minors come from Syria, at 664, with 157 coming from Afghanistan, 100 coming from...

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. special operations forces mounted an unsuccessful mission to rescue two American University of Afghanistan professors kidnapped in Kabul last month -- after an earlier mission was aborted when the White House withheld its approval -- defense officials with knowledge of the incident told Fox News. Fox News is told the operation, which took place a few days after their Aug. 7 kidnapping, killed seven enemy fighters. But when the firefight ended, there was no sign of the hostages. One of the hostages is American; the other is Australian. It was not the first attempt by the U.S. military...

The Air Force is considering upgrading the valor award won by TSgt. John Chapman from an Air Force Cross to a Medal of Honor. A recent review of a drone surveillance video of a 2002 firefight between a US special ops team and Al Qaeda fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan that killed seven Americans is now a focus of controversy. The newly discovered video shows that a Navy SEAL team left the area because its members believed Chapman to have been killed. The video, however, suggests that Chapman was still alive, that he killed two more insurgents and provided...

Last fall, the Navy Department had a controversial disciplinary case before it: Maj. Jason C. Brezler had been asked by Marine colleagues to submit all the information he had about an influential Afghan police chief suspected of abusing children. Brezler sent a classified document in response over an unclassified Yahoo email server, and he self-reported the mistake soon after. But the Marine Corps recommended that he be discharged for mishandling classified material. The Navy Department, which oversees the Marine Corps, had the ability to uphold or overturn the decision. However, rather than just looking at the merits of the case,...

The US investigation has found that the Facebook groups accessed by the friends of JeM handler Kashif Jaan were related to jihad and JeM. Two months after asking Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the 2016 Pathankot terrorist attack to justice, the US has now handed over evidence confirming that the attack on Pathankot airbase did in fact come from Pakistan. On January 2, 2016, a heavily armed group attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station, part of the India's Western Air Command, killing six Indian security personnel. India blamed Pakistan-based jihadi group Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) for orchestrating the brutal assault. According...

Back in April 2016, the New York Times published an article highlighting a number of Facebook pages in the Middle East being used to sell U.S. military equipment. A terrorist hoping to buy an antiaircraft weapon in recent years needed to look no further than Facebook, which has been hosting sprawling online arms bazaars, offering weapons ranging from handguns and grenades to heavy machine guns and guided missiles. The Facebook posts suggest evidence of large-scale efforts to sell military weapons coveted by terrorists and militants. The weapons include many distributed by the United States to security forces and their proxies...

The Holsteinischer Courier reports that a 4-year-old boy was raped by a 22-year-old Afghani asylum seeker in a bathroom at a migrant camp in the town of Boostedt, in the nothern German Schleswig-Holsten region. The is the latest in a what has become a long and unending pattern of migrants sexual assaulting women and children throughout Germany and Europe. The Afghani man didnâ€™t even try to hide the abuse, as he put his and the boyâ€™s shoes outside the bathroom door. When the father saw the two pairs of shoes he opened the door and found his son, with his...

The American University of Afghanistan in Kabul is under assault, while security forces exchange gunfire with the attackers. The number of students and professors inside are unknown, as is the identity of the attackers. The U.S. State Department this morning acknowledged reports of the attack on an official Twitter account. "Reports of attack on American University in Kabul. Exercise caution, avoid unnecessary movement in the area & monitor news for updates," the agency said. Massoud Hossaini, a photographer for The Associated Press, tweeted that he is trapped inside. “Help we are stuck inside AUAF and shooting flollowed [sic] by Explo...

Gunmen have stormed American University of Afghanistan in Kabul on Wednesday night as witnesses said they heard gunfire and explosions ringing out. According to media reports, the attackers have infiltrated the educational institution. Teachers and hundreds of students are said to be sheltering inside the building.

The Next Benghazi - Concerns About The Situation In Afghanistan - Benghazi 2.0 Brian interviews Sara Carter (Circa News) who has discovered there is no security plan. Military contractors say state dept does not have a plan to evacuate civilians and contractors. The state dept, according to law, is supposed to have a plan.

An elderly Afghan cleric has been arrested after he married a six-year-old girl, officials said on Friday, in the latest case highlighting the scourge of child marriages in the war-battered country. Mohammad Karim, said to be aged around 60, was held in central Ghor province as he claimed her parents gave him the girl as a "religious offering", officials said. But they cited the family of the girl, believed to be in shock, as saying that she was abducted from western Herat province, bordering Iran. "This girl does not speak, but repeats only one thing: 'I am afraid of this...

The policy document, known as the President Policy Guidance, or PPG, says counterterrorism operations, including lethal action against designated terrorist targets, "shall be discriminating and precise as reasonably possible" and says "direct action" against "high value targets" "will be taken only when there is near certainty that the individual being targeted is, in fact, the lawful target and located at the place where the action will occur."

Two professors, one of them an American citizen, were reportedly abducted at gun point near the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul this weekend, ABC News reported. The other man was Australian, according to ABC. Men wearing National Security forces uniforms reportedly kidnapped the men at about 8:30 p.m. Kabul time, according to the Voice of America. The Kabul police have begun an investigation into the incident. A U.S. State Department official said the department is "aware of reports of a U.S. citizen kidnapped in Kabul." "Due to privacy considerations, we have no information to offer," an official told Voices...

Outgunned, outmanoeuvred, hopelessly outnumbered and besieged in the Afghan desert, a small band of British soldiers chose to save a final bullet for themselves rather than fall into Taliban hands. For nearly two months, the 88 men of Easy Company – a mix of Paratroopers and the Royal Irish – had faced the overwhelming force and firepower of up to 500 Taliban determined to over-run the remote Helmand outpost of Musa Qala.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. After two American soldiers were murdered by an Islamic terrorist in Afghanistan while a crowd of protesters shouted “Death to Americans” and “Death to Infidels”, General Allen visited his men. “There will be moments like this when you’re searching for the meaning of this loss. There will be moments like this when your emotions are governed by anger and a desire to strike back,” Allen pleaded. “Now is not the time for revenge, now is not the time for vengeance.”...

A creepy cleric in Afghanistan was arrested after marrying a 6-year-old girl, with the tyke so terrified she could only utter, “I am afraid of this man.” Mohammad Karim, an Afghan cleric, 60, said he married the girl after she was given to him as “a religious offering,” Radio Free Liberty reported. “The girl was given to me as a gift and we were married so I could raise her,” Karim said.

Afghans Go to Syria to Fight for Its Government, and Anguish Results By KAREEM FAHIM JULY 28, 2016 HERAT, Afghanistan — One woman here in the western Afghan city of Herat said she had begged her son not to go fight in the Syrian war, but he charged off anyway, leaving a wife and three children behind. A man overhearing her story came over to say that his son had left two months ago, and since then the family has been desperate for news about him. Another woman, Khadija, whose son Hassan had joined Afghan brigades fighting alongside the Syrian...

First and for most as Creator of your heart I am the mentor you seek as to how to walk in loving kindness for this "IS" your heartbeat. So any time your heart seems out of sorts truly it is because you have left this foundation to walk in un-forgiveness or judgment of another heart that I created to walk in this very thing the commandment to love me first and others in this very same manner for I am Judge and Savior not man, woman or child . Therefore guard your heart by living in My love but to...

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier said on Tuesday evening in response to the Würzburg axe attack that refugees are no more likely than anyone else to commit terrorist atrocities. All the evidence from the last 12 months shows that the danger of terrorism posed by refugees “is not larger or smaller than that in the rest of the population”, Altmaier told broadcaster ZDF. The chief of staff was making the comment after a 17-year-old who had arrived in Germany in 2015 claiming to have fled from Afghanistan, attacked passengers with an axe on a train near Würzburg,...